WPMU DEV Update – 2016 Review (And What’s Coming Up!)

WPMU DEV Update – 2016 Review (And What’s Coming Up!)

While the world over couldn’t wait to see the back of 2016, it was a huge year for us – our biggest year ever, in fact!

We released a stack of new plugins and API services. Seriously, we released loads of products. So to kick off the new year, today we’re launching Update, our new monthly product update newsletter to keep you up-to-date on what we’re working on.

But for this first edition, I thought I’d run you through all the cool things we released in 2016 and give you a sneak peak of what we’ve got coming up in the next month.

The Academy

Since launching our WordPress Academy, thousands of members have enrolled in our courses on everything from WordPress development to business, Multisite, careers and Upfront.

Upfront

Remember the beta version of our theme platform Upfront? You wouldn’t recognize it now. We’ve added a ton of interface and performance improvements, new themes, not to mention MarketPress and WooCommerce integration, and our Upfront Builder that allows you to make your own WordPress themes from scratch. Seriously, it’s a theme game changer that’s about to explode.

9 Responses

My Favourite release of 2016 was the HUB, makes my life so much easier to update and backup sites from a single dashboard. I would follow that in close second with the 10GB of free backup space, thanks to your Smush (close behind in third) technology your zipfile backups of the sites are so tiny in comparison to the actually site size.
Can’t wait for whats new in 2017 :)

Sounds awesome. What I really want to see in 2017 is the academy courses on demand. I can’t really wait 5 months to get enrolled for a(nother) 10 week course. You get my point, right? Let us choose when we want to take a certain course. It will be much, much better. You can also keep the enrollment part for the people who want the certificate. But we are talking about skills here. Nobody wants to wait that much to get some knowledge.

Totally get where you’re coming from! The reason why we’ve set up courses to run at set times is because we wanted to offer something different and more personalized than sites like Lynda.com and Treehouse. We have quite intensive final assignments at the end of each course (except the Upfront course), which our instructors personally grade, and we provide a certification when students finish a course. If we were to have on-demand courses, we would have to review whether or not to include these assignments as our instructors aren’t available to work on courses week-to-week.

I have noted your comment (it’s not the first request for on-demand courses!). The Academy is coming up on a year now so we’ll be reviewing it soon and making more changes to improve how it runs. It’s great to see you’re taking courses and if you have any more feedback do let me know!

I approve your intention to create a better feeling than with Lynda courses, because it’s in the right direction. But what about my proposal – having both on-demand videos with no certification and having courses with certification available the same way they are now. So, people will decide if they want a certificate or knowledge is more than enough for them.

I guess it will bring some more work at the desks, but this way everyone will be happy. I hope you’ll at least consider that :) Thanks much and stay awesome!

What I’m looking forward to the most is an update to the Upfront builder. I would love to see Upfront become a serious contender for the top WP site builder! If Upfront can get on the level of Divi, you guys will really become a one-stop shop!

Am loving the new plugins but just wanted to touch base and ask if there was any plans this year to look at existing plugins such as ProSites. With the emergence of a number of new plugins that are offering the same, if not better functionality, it may be time for an update.